Divine Details: Shapeshifter Collage for Harriet Tubman
Tonight I am facilitating an online workshop called “My People Are Free”: Harriet Tubman and Prophecy in the Present Tense, and as I prepare our activities for tonight, I am revisiting my collage “Shapeshifter” for Harriet Tubman.
A photo inscribed with the words “Harriet Tubman, nurse, spy and scout” formed the basis for my collage “Shapeshifter” but the list could have been so much longer, and the words on that page seemed too small for the epic spirit of a tiny fugitive. What about general, healer, visionary? What about teacher, dreamer, aunt? What about sister, prophet, genius? In the collage near Harriet Tubman’s head you can see a scrap of Metis artist Christi Belacourt’s “GOOD LAND” a reframe of Canada mapped for indigenous reclamation as reprinted in Briarpatch magazine. Near her hand is a series of bowls to honor the necessary work Harriet Tubman did as an herbalist, healing people on their long journeys to freedom, but also preparing their spirits to relate to their bodies newly in a new context. Zachari Curtis gave a hands-on-workshop on the plant allies in the direct area of the Combahee River during Mobile Homecoming/Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind’s Combahee Pilgrimage in 2013 to mark the 150th anniversary of Tubman’s Combahee River Uprising. Adaku Utah and Harriet’s Apothecary continue this sacred work of preparing our bodies and spirits to recognize and activate the presence of our freedom. Harriet Tubman did her work on behalf of multitudes of people, many of whom she would never meet, an infinitude of living beings beyond the human, and to do it, she activated her own multiplicity, not only through her many effective disguises, but also through the multiple skill-sets she gained from within her communities of origin and practice. For me, the collage “Shapeshifter” is a ceremony where the infinite possibility Harriet Tubman activated in practice, travels into our contemporary multitudes in the streets as Idle No More, Black Lives Matter and beyond, and the one at a time work of healing, feeding and nurturing each other’s bodies and spirits. Infinite love to Harriet Tubman who believed in our freedom more than she believed in the lie that stole us from ourselves, and acted accordingly.
P.S. By popular demand my collage “Shapeshifter” for Harriet Tubman and 19 of my other ancestral collages are available in 11x17 and 28x22 prints. All proceeds go towards the ongoing work of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.
